Archive for June 20, 2011

In part three of this unfilmed screenplay, I originally had a character crushed to death by a falling refrigerator, then realized with mortification that I’d unconsciously nicked that image from Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol comic, which was a major influence on the story’s absurdist supervillainy in the first place. I swiftly replaced the gag with something else, but I’m not sure it’s as good.

Turner the detective was my attempt at writing a character as boring as the ones in Taggart, the Scottish television cop show. I thought a film as silly as this might need a character with no interesting attributes just so the audience could rest their eyes a little.

The idea for the occupation/residence of Howie, my third protagonist, came from writer and ideas foundry Colin McLaren. I was describing the plot of a dull social realist Scottish film, TICKETS FOR THE ZOO, and told him it was about poverty-stricken youngsters. “So they go and live in the zoo?” he asked. “Brilliant!” Alas, they did not go and live in the zoo, but that meant I could use the idea.

Howie’s name is the first of this week’s tributes to THE WICKER MAN. Now read on…

EXT. EDINBURGH ZOO – EVENING

A dusk chorus of ANIMAL noises.

An elderly ZOOKEEPER hobbles from the Monkey House, a sack of nuts under his arm.

He passes a cage. Stops.

A man sits on a stool in the cage.

A crude hand-lettered cardboard SIGN is marked “Human”.

The human reads a copy of THE SUN. A headline barks “PEBBLES STOLEN!” over a photo of a beach.

This human is called HOWIE.

ZOOKEEPER

You can’t stay in there forever, Howie. They’ll chuck you out one of these days.

Howie lets his paper droop.

HOWIE

Give us some nuts, man.

The Zookeeper looks affronted, but hey, it’s his job…

He pours some monkey nuts into a bowl in Howie’s cage.

ZOOKEEPER

You can’t live on monkey nuts.

HOWIE

The other monkeys seem to do alright.

ZOOKEEPER

If my boss finds out you’re here –

HOWIE

You keep saying that. I don’t believe he exists.

The Zookeeper waddles off, fretting.

Howie is on the point of raising his paper again when out the corner of his eye he notices a cloaked figure distributing leaflets to the winds.

An abandoned leaflet blows past Howie’s cage and he grabs it. It is hate literature:

DIRTY PENGUINS!

THEY COME OVER HERE AND EAT OUR FISH

SAY NO TO ARCTIC SCUM!

Howie frowns.

EXT. THE FORTH BRIDGE – EVENING

The sun sinks into Fife, painfully inflamed.

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR TURNER arrives at the scene of his baffling.

Emerging from his car he finds first a pot of spilled orangey-red paint – Forth Bridge Red. Then a MAN in overalls, with an antique golf bag stuck through his torso. There is no blood, and the corpse looks peaceful.

FORENSIC NERDS take pictures and dust the chair for prints.

Pulling on a rubber glove, Turner boldly removes a club.

TURNER

Hickory. Interesting.

PC THROWER

Old-fashioned, sir.

Turner shoots him a cross look. THROWER is an idiot.

TURNER

Cause of death?

PC THROWER

The forensic nerd says he was stabbed to death with a blunt instrument. It’s a real headscratcher, sir.

TURNER

Any object can become a stabbing weapon if used with sufficient force. Even this golf bag. The man we’re looking for – and I believe it IS a man – must be both incredibly strong… and diabolically clever.

He practices his swing with the club and suddenly notices minute Forth Bridge red lettering delicately painted on the business end. It reads –

IF IS!

TURNER

“If is”? It’s not even grammatical.

PC THROWER

(eager to please)

Sir? Should we dust the bridge for prints? It might take a while…

But Turner just stares off at the CAWING gulls which arc into the infernal sunset.

TURNER

It CAN’T be…

INT. STAIRWELL, SHEENA’S FLAT – NIGHT

Water spatters the steps. Sheena plods upstairs, passing an old woman, MISS HING, who is mopping the stair.

A WAREHOUSE OF WOES! If was also associated in the popular press with outbreaks of hysterical fatness, a walking church, man-eating furniture, the seduction of a ventriloquist’s dummy, and a boat-full of soiled divans which alarmed fishermen in Newhaven, though nothing was ever proved.

POSTAL EROSION! After each horror, If sent taunting letters to The Scotsman newspaper, declaring his intention to throw off forever the bonds of reality and liberate the world from its own existence. He claimed: “Dear Boss: The world is my oyster and I mean to shell her.”

Uck puck.

Sheena lays down the file and frowns – was that the cackle of a hen?

Edward Woodward pads through to the bathroom to investigate. Sheena follows, leaving the file on the back of the settee.

As she leaves the room, the file falls and slips through a crack in the floorboards.

INT. SHEENA’S BATHROOM – NIGHT

Dark.

A sheep BAAS.

The toilet FLUSHES.

Sheena yanks the light cord, and the bathroom is illuminated.

There is no one there, except Edward Woodward, who has been blacked up, minstrel-fashion, a small banjo strung over his shoulder…

TO BE CONTINUED!

What connects a police museum guide, a detective and the human exhibit of Edinburgh Zoo? What is Mr. If’s diabolical master-plan? Can feline blackface routines catch on? Tune in to our next exciting episode!